?still helpful? – Presenting Applications to Landlords

When you present application(s) to a landlord, you will want to include all pertinent information. Here is the important information, along with notes:

Start with an opening paragraph about your recommendation. This is a great/good/okay/bad applicant and you recommend accepting / accepting with additional deposit / declining them. State why you recommend this.

• Rental amount + Deposit + Any Pet Deposits
• Lease term – when it starts and when it ends. We always want a lease to end between March and end of June, with very few exceptions (almost never an exception.) Landlords will typically like longer leases, unless they plan to live in or sell the house the following year.
• Name of all occupants in property
• Type/breed/weight of all pets
• Total income of all occupants in property (We require a minimum of 3X the monthly rent to qualify. So, if the rent is $2000/month, the tenants must make $6000/month in total income.)
• Itemize the credit scores of each tenant. (We generally accept tenants with 620+ credit scores. Landlords love to see 700+. If one tenant has bad credit, we can automatically decline them, but we will often make an exception if another tenant has great credit.)
• Itemize the criminal record of each tenant. (Any “crime against a person” or felony is an automatic decline.)
• Does the application system show a clean rental history for each tenant? If so, tell them here. If not, it’s usually an automatic decline.
• Are there any guarantors? (Guarantors are common when a tenant doesn’t make much money – ex. students. Guarantors can make up for bad credit, but the guarantor needs to be strong w/ great income and credit.)